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Tag Archives: Kansas

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, March 6, 2018:

John Lott (left) being presented SAF’s Journalist of the Year

In a report that the national media didn’t deem newsworthy, the Office of Public Safety at the Lawrence campus of the University of Kansas (KU) said last week that during the first six months that students were allowed to carry concealed on campus, there were no incidents — zero criminal weapons violations — to report. But the office did report that overall crime, mostly thefts, dropped by 13 percent.

The report said nothing about the freedom granted students starting last July to carry concealed on campus if they so desired, but instead stated that the drop in crime and the utter lack of weapons violations were likely due to “the use of security technology on campus, such as cameras … and more police and security officers [that] were added to the Public Safety Office in 2017.”

Undoubtedly, if there had been one weapons violation — just one — it would have made headline news in every liberal media outlet in the country. But in its absence, the media has remained silent.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, June 14, 2017:

schoolDeborah Ballard-Reisch’s letter to the president of Wichita State University (WSU) announcing her unexpected retirement certainly sounded reasonable:

Dear President [John] Bardo,

I am grateful for the amazing opportunity I’ve had for the 10 years I’ve spent at Wichita State University. Serving as the Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Chair in Strategic Communication / Professor, Elliott School of Communication has been an honor and a pleasure. I have found dedicated colleagues, an administration supportive of faculty innovation, and motivated and engaged students who have inspired me.

Deborah Ballard-Reisch, serving as the Kansas Health Foundation’s distinguished chair in strategic communication at Wichita State University (WSU) for the last 10 years, resigned last week. In her letter to WSU’s President John Bardo, she said she’s retiring because “the climate in Kansas [is] more and more regressive, repressive, and in opposition to the values of higher education,” adding:

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, May 12, 2017:

In a fit of pique, KU associate professor Jacob Dorman decided to burn his bridges behind him when he left the faculty last week. Instead of packing up in the middle of the night, he chose instead to have his resignation letter published in the Topeka Capital-Journal. It was an infantile move that he is likely to regret for years to come.

An associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Kansas (KU) loudly announced his departure from the faculty after 10 years by having his resignation letter published on May 5 by the Topeka Capital-Journal. Wrote associate professor Jacob Dorman:

In light of the state of Kansas’ apparent determination to allow the concealed carry of firearms in the classrooms of the University of Kansas, I am writing to tender my resignation effective two weeks from today as an associate professor of history and American studies at the university. I have accepted a job in a state that bans concealed carry in classrooms.

This was no “apparent determination” by state legislators. For years the issue of constitutional carry has been debated in Topeka and under a compromise bill the issue of concealed carry by students on campus was resolved by allowing them to carry concealed effective July 1.

But according to Dorman, this new freedom somehow weakens the education those 28,400 students are currently getting at KU’s five campuses (Lawrence, Kansas City, Overland Park, Wichita, and Salina):

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, February 23, 2017:

OpenCarry.org open carry gun laws

Residents of New Hampshire are enjoying a long-awaited expansion of their Second Amendment rights with the signing into law on Wednesday of a bill allowing them to carry a firearm without first obtaining government permission. The third time “is a charm,” it is said, and this bill passed on the third attempt. The previous two attempts passed both state houses but were vetoed by previous Democrat governors.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 13, 2017:

In response to President Donald Trump’s executive order issued on January 25 — “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States” — a number of cities that formerly considered themselves as “sanctuary cities” for illegal immigrants are reversing their policies. The first to do so was Miami-Dade County in Florida the day after Trump issued his order.

Two Kansans, Shane Cox and Jeremy Kettler, engaged in the purchase and sale of a silencer in October 2015, believing they were exempt from the 1934 National Firearms Act’s requirements to register it and pay a $200 tax. They relied on the state’s Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA) which holds:

A bill that would have made public university and community college campuses in Kansas permanent “gun-free” zones failed on Tuesday in committee. Only two Democrats on the committee voted to send the bill on to the State Senate.

Under a law passed in 2013, public colleges and universities in Kansas will have to allow the concealed carry of firearms on their campuses starting in July. That law also opened public buildings to concealed carriers, but provided a four-year exemption for campuses.

Gun-rights people were ecstatic. The Kansas State Rifle Association said it

This article was published by The McAvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, May 18, 2016:

The Independent Journal Review (IJR) has rocketed from obscurity in 2012 to co-hosting the February 6 Republican Presidential Debate with ABC News. Its “viral news” website is visited by more than 35 million unique visitors every month. With just ten journos, it often puts out excellent work.

An example is its recent effort to “Put America’s Gun Violence into Perspective,” published in January. It shows graphically the paradigm shift over gun rights and the Second Amendment that has taken place over the last 20 years. It provides evidence, if more be needed, that

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, May 17, 2016:

Image of the Bill of Rights (United States Constitution) cropped to show just the Second Amendment.

Missouri lawmakers passed a bill expanding Second Amendment-protected self-defense rights just as the legislative session was coming to a close last Friday night. The bill is now on Governor Jay Nixon’s desk awaiting his signature.

Once it becomes law, it will allow Missourians to carry concealed, if they care to, without first being forced to apply for permission to do so. The new law also enacts a “stand-your-ground” right allowing citizens to defend themselves against attack in any place where they have a right to be. This would make Missouri the 31st state in the union where those laws (or court precedents) already exist, and the first since 2011 to enact such a law.

The bill passed both state houses with more than enough votes to override a veto if Nixon decides to turn it down.

Missouri is just one more example of pro-Second Amendment victories being enjoyed by citizens across the land as momentum continues to build for such expansions.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 30, 2015:

Kansas State University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Effective July 1, residents of Kansas may carry a concealed firearm without any type of permit or license, except for students at the state’s universities. For them, the freedom to carry begins July 2, 2017.

The Wichita Eagle conducted a survey of students and some administration officials about the new freedom to carry and received mixed reactions. Some they called “hardliners” for taking the Second Amendment at face value and iterating the results from studies showing that more guns = less crime, including less chance of getting caught defenseless in a mass shooting.

This article was published at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, September 21, 2015:

Justice Antonin Scalia

The results of the annual survey, “Best States for Gun Owners 2015,” just released in July, showed little change at the top, or the bottom, of the states’ ranking: Washington, DC still ranks dead last, while Arizona continues at the top of all states for gun freedom. In its introduction, G and A noted:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, July 20, 2015:

Florida Governor Rick Scott

Since the shooting of military personnel at a recruiting center in Chattanooga last week, governors in half-a-dozen states have ordered members of their National Guard to arm themselves. Florida Governor Rick Scott went a step further, ordering the closing of six storefront locations and moving them into armories.

U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson punted last week on the Brady Campaign’s lawsuit against Kansas’ Second Amendment Protection Act by declaring that the Brady Campaign lacked standing to bring the suit in the first place. She wrote:

At this time, Brady Campaign has not alleged an actual or imminent injury that is fairly traceable to the enforcement of the Act [that would therefore] be addressable by a favorable decision by this Court.

This allowed Judge Robinson to avoid considering all the various “issues” raised by Brady: “The Court therefore need not reach the other issues raised in Defendants’ motion to dismiss.”

What “other issues”? For starters is the law’s declaration that “any act, treaty, order, rule or regulation by the government of the United States which violates the Second Amendment of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.”

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 12, 2015:

Aerial view of Kansas City, Kansas, looking southwest. The Kansas River (right-center) joins the Missouri River (left). A small piece of Kansas City, Missouri is visible on the left of the Missouri River.

Kansas House members debated until midnight Thursday whether to raise sales and cigarette taxes in order to close the state’s budget deficit. The House had just resoundingly defeated a previous measure that would have raised those taxes even more, but the state is facing a deadline to balance its budget, required under its constitution.

There’s a roughly $400-million shortfall this year, which is estimated to increase for the next several years.

Left-wing pundits have had a field day taking Governor Sam Brownback to task for calling his massive tax cuts enacted in 2012 an “experiment,” a “shot of adrenalin,” and similar to Ronald Reagan’s experiment based on the Laffer Curve: Reducing tax rates will increase tax revenues as the economy grows.

Paul Rosenberg, senior editor of Random Lengths News, a tiny weekly newspaper operating out of Long Beach, California, is a good example. His paper describes itself as an “independent progressive newspaper” with a readership of 63,000 that “is proud of the support from the Harbor Area labor unions, who allow us exclusive distribution inside most of their union halls.”

Rosenberg managed to get a screed attacking Brownback published in the hard-left Salon magazine in which he describes the Kansas governor as

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, April 6, 2015:

Sam Brownback

Last Thursday Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law a bill expanding Kansas’ permitless open carry laws to include concealed carry, adding Kansas to the ever-growing list of other states to do so.

Otherwise called “Constitutional carry” or “Vermont carry,” permitless carry satisfies most Second Amendment purists who believe that the phrase “…the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says: one doesn’t need permission to exercise a right.

For years Kansans have enjoyed the right to carry a firearm openly, without permission. But if a coat or a jacket covers it, or if one wishes to carry it in a purse or satchel, he would need to obtain a concealed carry permit from the state to do so. And so he will, until the new law becomes effective July 1.

At the moment, Kansas will join numerous other states with similar freedoms, including

Some Republicans are beginning to lick their chops in anticipation of a takeover of the Senate in November. New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already promised to rein in Obamacare, pass a real budget, and hold hearings on the EPA’s onerous greenhouse gas regulations – which would resonate positively with his coal-fired constituents in Kentucky.

Big government liberals and high spending politicians have converged on Kansas, seeing an opportunity to discredit not only Ronald Reagan’s tax policies but to get even with the Tea Party, which took out a number of “moderate” Republicans in the state Senate over the last two election cycles.

Gov. Sam Brownback (pictured above), a supporter of less government and lower taxes, was able to ride the conservative wave that resulted in tax reform that not only increased an individual taxpayer’s standard deduction from $4,500 to $5,500 but also

This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 22, 2014:

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback

Rarely has a governor’s race had such a clear-cut focus. In Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback is facing a strong challenge from Democrat Paul Davis, who is concentrating on Brownback’s tax policies, which were designed to stimulate Kansas’ moribund economy. They’re not working, says Davis, and the tax cuts passed by Brownback 20 months ago need to be repealed to save the Kansas economy and protect government services.

Davis is getting a lot of help from liberals and from moderate Republicans who